'Should we change the general election voting system?' poll discussion

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Gareth_Lazelle

DJ_Mike wrote: »

If, by right direction, you mean MPs being returned with far less people voting for them as their first preference than under FPTP (where there is only one preference), then I completely agree.

That's one way of looking at it,

The other way is that the FPTP candidates are really winning with the vote-share indicated by the first round of AV voting, just obfuscated by tactical voting, etc (i.e.: FPTP artificially boosts popular parties vote-share and makes them look more popular than they actually are, and on the flip-side, it artificially erodes the vote-share of less popular parties, and makes them look less popular than they are).

In theory the first round of an AV vote would give an actual snapshot of how people would really choose to vote (rather than the lie that is the result of an FPTP election), that's got to be worth something (it represents the truth, rather than a truth distorted by tactics),

And if that means a smaller vote share for the winning party as determined by the first round of votes alone, then at least they can say that it was fairly earned.

And hey, even a second or third choice vote still indicates that they'd pick you as opposed to the other guy... Why is that such a problem?

If you think about it those 2nd and 3rd votes just reflect the way tactical voting would have distorted an FPTP election - so if you dislike the 2nd/3rd votes counting FPTP is worse because many voters in effect don't even get a first choice! (to clarify - by voting tactically you are sacrificing your first choice without knowing for sure whether your first choice might have won, but your "second choice" still counts).

Look, if every constituency comes down to a labour vs. tory vote then that's fine, but everyone deserves to be able to pick between them if that is the case (not just those who picked one of them as a first choice), and we deserve to know if that truly is the case before being forced to vote for one of them,

(i.e.: other parties deserve a fair look-in without their voters feeling robbed of any say in that final choice - even voters for other parties likely have a preference for one of the final two, why shouldn't they be allowed a say?).

Gareth_Lazelle

Oh, as a side-note,

In effect 2nd and 3rd choices are weighted slightly differently in AV,

That is not because they count as less than one vote - they clearly do.

It is because by making a party your second or third choice, there is no guarantee that the party will be available for your vote for by the time your second or third choice gets used.

That makes late choices much less valuable than 1st choices to the receiving party, because if they don't get enough first choice votes then 2nd/3rd choices will never count at all.

rpb

I find it very hard to see why so many people are against AV. Sure AV is not perfect, but most of the arguments against are along the lines of "AV is not perfect so let's stick to the system we have at the moment that's no better (where an MP can easily get in to parliament when 60% or more of their local voters didn't vote for them)."

I quite like the idea that, if I vote for a candidate, but it turns out that they have no hope of getting in, then I still have a say in who of the remaining candidates get in.

I may vote for Candidate C, but they don't have enough support. So the votes are recounted without C, and again I have a say as to whether I prefer Candidate A or Candidate B. Sure, I'd have preferred C, but given that C had insufficient votes I'd like my preference for A or B to be counted. With FPTP I have no way of voting for my preference.

With FPTP I either vote for C and waste my vote, or vote strategically for someone who isn't my preferred choice. In other words FPTP either completely ignores the wishes of anyone voting a preference for a minority party, or they have to vote strategically right from the start and not vote for their preferred candidate. How is that obvious, transparent or democratic?

To be honest, compared to FPTP, I really can't see any democratic disadvantages of AV. And with sensible counting methods I doubt it would cost much more if anything to hold an election. (Especially given that most counters are volunteers anyway.)

Sure PR would be much more democratic, but this vote is a foot in the door, a call from the people that we would like more democracy. We want our votes to count. We want our representatives to have support from the majority of voters, not the largest minority.

rpb

I just read the article on AV on Wikipedia, and it's interesting that there are several good "pros" in the list for adopting AV (limit tactical voting, the 'spoiler' effect, measuring voter sentiment (isn't that exactly the point?!?) and several more), yet the list of "cons" are almost exclusively very minor or spurious things such as certain things it doesn't improve, potential problems if it is not implemented correctly (electronic counting without audit, for example), or criticisms that have been debunked ("one person one vote").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote#Arguments_presented_for_instant_runoff_voting

So the choice seems definitely to be simply between no improvement with a mandate not to improve things later (FPTP) or some improvement with a reasonable chance of further future improvement (AV).

And Gareth - what a great summary: "... even voters for other parties likely have a preference for one of the final two, why shouldn't they be allowed a say?"

Dave_Gould

Electoral reform had to be forced out the Tories and Labour. Apart from Brown's attempts to curry favour with Clegg (which is actually what Clegg referred to as "I am not going to settle for a miserable little compromise thrashed out by the Labour Party.") it has not been discussed in the Commons since the 30s.

What do these two points tell you about the state of our democracy under FPTP?

Our consistently anti-democratic governments produced by FPTP are the reason why STV is not on the ballot.

But let's compare FPTP to AV:

FPTP:
Only 2 parties can win (Duverger's Law)
BNP can get in with 27% (Coalville 2009)
Voting for smaller parties is generally a waste of a vote
Similar candidates harm each other (Spoiler effect)

AV:
Disincentive for voting for smaller parties and independents is completely removed
MPs generally require 50% support (which is why the BNP are opposed)
Votes are never wasted. If your candidate is eliminated in the first round, you're automatically voting for your second favourite in the next round and so on.
Similar candidates can stand. AV means that people standing as Independent Tory or Independent Labour can vote with their conscience and not how they were whipped.

FPTP is so bad that it makes AV look like a massive improvement. Also, under our version, preferences are optional so if you don't feel qualified to rank all the candidates, you don't have to.

There isn't a single person in the No campaign that isn't a Tory or Labour activist, or employee paid to lie to us. They feel the need to lie about the cost, the number of votes voters get and even imply that AV kills babies.

We won't get a chance like this to claw back power from the Establishment in another 50 years... unless we vote YES of course and start to get more representative governments.

Gordon_the_Moron

FPTP can let in someone that the majority do not want to vote for?

So can IRV, example

Votes go like this

Labour (40 first choices, 9 second choices, no third or fourth choices)
Conservative (same as Labour)
BNP (1 first choice, 29 second choices, 10 third choices, 17 fourth choices)
UKIP (2 first choices, 27 second choices, 45 third choices, 10 fourth choices)

UKIP who 98% of the voters have not chosen as their first choice wins !

angry

Hello Gordon,

I think you might have misunderstood how the system works. Counting in your example would go something like this:

"Round 1":
Labour: 40
Conservative: 40
BNP: 1
UKIP: 2
(total: 83)

No clear winner yet, let's get rid of the loser (BNP).
For the one person who voted BNP as number 1, his vote is transferred to his choice number 2. I don't know from your example who that is, but let's assume it's UKIP.


"Round 2":
Labour: 40
Conservative: 40
UKIP: 3 (original 2, plus the one "second choice")
(total: 83)

No clear winner yet, let's get rid of the loser (UKIP).
We now have 3 people who's choices have been knocked out. The guy who originally wanted the BNP has no third choice, so we can't take his views into account any more.
The two people who had UKIP as their first choice... let's say their second choices were BNP for one of them, and Labour for the other.
BNP has already gone, and it looks like that guy didn't have a 4th choice, so, from the three people who wanted BNP or UKIP as their first choice, there is only 1 left who's views we can take into account.

"Round 3":
Labour: 41 (original 40, plus UKIP guy's second choice)
Conservative: 40
(total: 81)


Labour victory.



(somebody please correct me if I've got this wrong, or if you can make it more clear!)

Now, I know this sounds a bit complicated... it certainly took me quite a few goes to get my head round it.
Some people will say that that's a bad thing. [nobody has said so yet, but maybe somebody reading is thinking that]. But I think this is a GOOD thing.
At the moment, you or I, the average joe has to do the complicated bit. "Well, I'd love for X to get in, but the leaflet I got said if I vote for X, Y will get in. I really don't want Y. So maybe I should vote for Z?"
Blegh.

By moving this complication onto the voting system, we move the complexity away from you and I. We can just rank our preferences as we like them, and the wonderfully crafted system takes care of the rest!

Gareth_Lazelle

angry wrote: »

Hello Gordon,

I think you might have misunderstood how the system works. Counting in your example would go something like this:
<snip>
(somebody please correct me if I've got this wrong, or if you can make it more clear!)

Looks spot on to me,

It also highlights how second and third choices are less valuable than first choices - if they where worth as much as 1st choices UKIP would have won,

But because only 1st choices are counted in round one, and first/second choices in round 2 UKIPs extra 3rd choice votes are worthless,

Of course, if UKIP had more 1st/2nd choice votes, then they might have made it through to round 3, and the 3rd choice votes may have helped them.

Votes may all be counted equally, but 1st choice votes are by far more useful to the parties because they will always be counted. And as a consequence, parties will always need to fight for 1st votes.